The Tsarnaev’s Jihad

The Tsarnaev History

As you all probably have seen ad-nauseum on the news the history of the Boston Marathon perpetrators has been re-constructed by people who know them and subjected to almost a minute by minute accounting it seems. Yet only now are dribs and drabs coming out through interviews on the news of how devout Tamerlan had become and perhaps how radical he really was. It seems that the boys had hidden well their growing radical beliefs from everyone around them formally but if you paid attention you could see the signs. For all intents and purposes though, the boys seemed to be assimilating (Djokhar more than Tamerlan) to life in the states but once you start prying back the veil you can see much more was going on.

In articles and blog posts throughout the internet a picture is emerging on the boys, their family dynamic which lends to the idea that this family had its share of issues and perhaps a history of unbalanced behavior as well. The mother for example was caught shop lifting $1,600.00 worth of clothing from a Lord & Taylor as well as has been described by others as being a 9/11 “Truther” while the father has been painted as a thug or a tough who also has been called crazy by some. So, you can see that as we go along, like any family they have their foibles. All of this though does not make for a radical jihadi unless you add to this a longing for a history, a kinship to their titular home (Dagestan/Kyrgyzstan/Chechnya) and an increasing feeling of disenfranchisement with their adoptive home.

Suffice to say that the Tsarnaev’s are and were a complex lot and out of all of them given what we know now, the only one who really assimilated seemed to be Djokhar. Sadly though he decided I think, to follow his elder brother into Jihad because of the influence over him that Tamerlan had. However, I could be wrong, perhaps Djokhar always had the seed of jihad within and it only evolved naturally.. Only time will tell once he is no longer sedated and able to answer questions I guess. On the whole though I will say that they hid their tendencies and plans for a long time without anyone being the wiser. Even their online behavior has been hard to prize out and get a clear picture of their plans as well as their involvement in jihad.

Radicalization

As it is coming out in the news these last couple of days it seems that the key to the events that lead up to the bombing was a trip to Russia by Tamerlan in 2011. This trip also kicked off the FSB’s query to the FBI here to look into Tamerlan for what would later be seen as radical beliefs that he indeed did have. The FBI looked into Tamerlan and found nothing at the time but it seems that perhaps even this event in and of itself would lead Tamerlan to carry out the final Boston plan as it held up his petition to become a citizen here. Was that the last straw on the camels back? One really has to wonder about that. Obviously Tamerlan at the very least was becoming radicalized, enough for the FSB to make that call because he had said things in Russia or had been seen colluding with people known to be radical.

Interestingly it wasn’t until after his trip to Moscow that Tamerlan set up the YouTube site and linked to the Dagestani jihad videos and those of the radical Imam. Thus I expect that he came into contact with someone there who had the key to his radical jihadi lock so to speak and opened him up to it all. Just as well he was there for six months and could in fact have had training while he was there in bomb making as evidenced by the pressure cooker bombs they used at the marathon. The question then becomes was he inducted and trained as well as perhaps supported by a jihadist group in Chechnya or Dagestan? This is as yet unclear and the case can be made on both sides that either they did it on their own without training as well as Tamerlan got the training and support by an as yet un-named jihadist faction. My gut is telling me that Tamerlan had at the very least some training while he was in Moscow on bomb prep and tactics before he came back to the US.

Inspired?

An alternate theory is that they were “Inspired” to be lone wolves by Inspire Magazine and other materials out on the internet. While nothing has been said yet of the contents of any hard drives that may have been found at their house, I am going to guess that they may indeed have some Inspire issues there. Djokhar’s laptop took a hit in December of last year so I am not sure if he got a new one after that (assuming yes) so there is likely to be some good data forthcoming from the computer forensics guys at the FBI. Until we get confirmation though that they had these materials it is anyone’s guess as to how they learned their tradecraft other than to say the internet.

The bombings though and the chase that followed has been a real shot in the arm to the AQ jihobbyists online who have been posting congratulations as well as composing nasheeds for the Tsarnaevs. If anything, this incident has inspired the jihobbyists out there and certainly has the AQ/AQAP types looking to capitalize on the actions taken by these two to try and create more like them. This whole thing including the closing down of Boston, the media circus, and now the fallout with congress critters ravening to create new “tough” laws as well as circumvent the ones on the books and treat the survivor as an “enemy combatant” are a win for jihad propaganda. Simply put, all of our reactions have only played to their twisted ideas of winning. So, inspired? Yes, this has been inspiring to them even if we do not know just how the boys were inspired to do this in the first place.

Chechen Jihad

Meanwhile there is the angle of the “homeland” and Chechen Jihad to contend with. It seems that Tamerlan primarily was feeling more kinship with Chechen jihad than being an American ..Or more to the point to aspire to be one and compete in the Olympics. Both boys seem to have been drawn to their original place of origin and in fact linked online to a group that comes from Dagestan in particular. At what level they were affiliated with them, or had contact with them is still unknown but from postings online by an acct that seems to belong to Djokhar he is looking to rationalize jihad with citations from the Koran. Tamerlan meanwhile had links to a radical Imam’s videos from the region as well but also had links to the Syrian conflict as well. So you can see that there is a direction (jihad) in general but an affinity for their homeland and it’s troubles as well. Even their nicknames that were used (in Tamerlan’s case Timur Mucuraev and muazseyfullah) are references to regional presences in jihad. So once can deduce their proclivities toward what was once their home as well as the jihad overall. What really remains to be seen is whether or not they were officially affiliated with the jihad there and group(s) thereof or not. I am sure that with time and some interviews we will be hearing just how much contact the boys may have had with anyone over there if at all. At the very least from what has been seen online one of them did reach out and connect with them but there is no telling just how they responded if at all.

Truther’s?

Another interesting twist to all of this has been the remarks by the boys mother on TV about how this is all a conspiracy. It seems that the Tsarnaev’s may have grown up with a conspiracist pablum fed to them by their mom. Did this have something to do with their ultimate decision to bomb the marathon and turn to jihad? One can make the argument that this could be the case because of the similarity in the narrative on 9/11 and other globalist conspiracies put out by the likes of Alex Jones. Frankly it’s an insidious brew that ensnares the weak minded and places their already delicate psyche’s into an even more paranoid and delusional place than they already were before.

More will come of this I suspect both in the investigation as well as all around it as I have already watched the “Jones-ian” mindset barrage the FBI and others at the press conferences last week asking inane questions on how this was all just a “False Flag” event to remove our civil liberties. It is this mindset and the malleability of the weak minded that allows for not only jihadi induction but any other militant group that might use this as fodder to brain wash a candidate into action. I am interested though to see just how much the 9/11 truther movement had influence over the mindset of the Tsarnaev boys.

Interrogations Soon

Finally, as Djokhar comes out of the drugs and the intubation it will all come to light just why he did these things. In the end I understand they both had suicide vests but neither carried out the final measure and became shahid. Why is that exactly one wonders if they were so moved to jihad? Induction and grooming would have tried to lead them to blow themselves up especially when cornered so why didn’t they? Perhaps they were too “Western” after all and thought they could escape like Butch and Sundace?

Once the interrogations happen, the evidence is collated, and charges filed perhaps we all will know more. Until then we need to focus on the why from a psychological issue. If they self radicalized what was it about them that made this happen? What is the psychological makeup of the jihadi? How do you detect it in someone? Is it something that one can stratify and place into some sort of DSM-V catalog? Certainly in this case no one around them really knew save maybe the uncle that Tamerlan talked to just after the bombings and he did not make a call to law enforcement either.

UPDATE:

Ok so a lot has been happening with this case since I posted this piece. Lately there have been congress critters going on morning shows spewing all kinds of useless innuendo about how the boys “must have had help” to make these bombs and to carry out the plot “so well” that I feel compelled to respond. First off let me start by saying that the congress critters need to shut the fuck up. Pure and simple. They need to step back from the lights and cameras and shut up. So far the information coming out of the investigation does not say that they had help at all. In fact, if you look at the whole affair you can see that at the most they may have sought help in the electronics for remote det devices “maybe” The reality is that you can get all of this information on the internet pretty easily and it does not take a mental genius to rig up a pressure cooker bomb and a cell phone.

Secondly lets look at the stupidity of the boys in their plot points.

1) Set off bombs at a large heavily camera covered event and get away: Sure it worked but they took no pains to cover their identities much did they? Had they been trained one of two operational tempo’s would have been employed (stealth and egress) or (stealth and shahid) The boys did not plan on being shahid and their stealth was lacking so how much training could there be?

2) They had no real prep for getaway and ended up carjacking someone to get a working car. Once again they were on camera AND they boasted about being the bombers to the carjacked person who they let go. Had they been trained and supported they would have had an egress plan to get out of the country. Instead they tentatively planned on going to Times Square to light off another pressure cooker… With their faces plastered over EVERYTHING.. Yeah, some elite training there…

3) Funding, there was none. They bought some fireworks and common materials to make the bombs just like they are shown in Inspire magazine and by all rights could have “made it in their mom’s kitchen” as the article title suggested.

In the end it appears to me that these guys did it on their own. They had inspiration from online jihadist videos from the likes of Kavkaz and Vilayat Dagestan but both have disavowed knowledge of them anyway. I think once we get all the facts we may see that they reached out but were not trusted by the jihadists. This is common in the jihadi circles to start but even more so in the Chechen area where the FSB and other military orgs have tried to put a stop to their activities. What this leaves us with and what the congress critters cannot fathom, is the fact that these two guys did this on their own, for their own reasons (Tamerlan primarily at his inability to box any more on Golden Gloves and not get his citizenship and Dzokhar following big brother’s example) and were not a plot by any jihadist organization. They were not geniuses and they certainly did not make mistakes in their attack, they just happened to catch us all off guard and carry out a heinous act just like any other mass murder scenario. Frankly I think that the Jihadi element to this was just a weak rationalization that they made as a panacea to quell all their woes in life and nothing more. It should be noted that Tamerlan only really started becoming more devout to “Islamic Jihad” once his boxing career was at a stand still. This is an important fact that many are not paying attention to and should be. This is not just a story about jihad and terror but also about a guy who just felt alienated and alone in a place he thought was his home and when that home became less available to sustaining his desires he turned to jihad.

So.. Once again congress critters.. STFU until such time as the FSB/CIA/FBI and others have solid proof of communications between the boys and Islamic jihad (aka Imarat Kavkaz)